How Faith Is Like Special Relativity

This morning I read in the Magnificat a whole passage from Psalm 97, but the particular phrase that struck me was this:

Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

I had just been looking at the heavy, gray, low-hanging rainclouds outside which are usually so depressing for me. So, it was surprising and helpful to realize that, rather than being a sign of God's absence, those very clouds signified His presence. 

A little later on in today's readings, I saw a familiar passage from Romans 8, particularly these verses:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words... We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. 

--Romans 8:26-28

I always think of this passage as St. Paul's encouragement to Christians who find themselves overwhelmed with their circumstances. First, he says that the Holy Spirit Himself is with us, and helping us to pray, especially when our fatigue and perplexity leave us without words. Then, St. Paul reminds us that all things ... not some things, and not most things, but all things work together for our good.

Later on in today's readings in Magnificat is a short exhortation written by Pope Benedict XVI, which I thought was especially on point for me:

The first thing should be that God is present in our life. The sums of human life don’t work out if God is left out: all that remains then is nothing but contradiction. So we mustn’t just believe in some theoretical way that God exists: we must consider him to be the most important and real thing in our life. As Scripture says, he must penetrate every layer of our life and fill it completely: our heart must know about him and let itself be moved by him; our soul; the power of our will and decision; our intelligence. He must be everywhere. And our fundamental attitude towards him, our fundamental relationship to him, must be called love.

Often this can be very difficult…. Often assent to God seems almost impossible. But those who abandon themselves to this rebellion poison their lives. The poison of negation, of anger against God and against the world, eats them away from within. But God wants from us as it were a down-payment of trust. He says to us: “I know you don’t understand me yet. But trust me: believe me when I tell you I am good and dare to live on the basis of this trust. Then you will discover that behind your suffering, behind the difficulties of your life, a love is hiding. Then you will know that precisely in this way I have done something good for you.” There are many examples of saints and great people who have dared to have this trust and who have thus found true happiness—for themselves and for many others—precisely in the greatest darkness.

I was particularly struck, moved even, by the sentences that I highlighted, and especially by the notion that God is asking of us a 'down-payment of trust'.

Here's the weird analogy that came to mind this morning. As you may know, Einstein derived all of Special Relativity from two postulates:

• The laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.
• The speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames and is not affected by the speed of its source.

In a way, St. Paul and Pope Benedict offer us a view of reality that is just as unexpected as Special Relativity was, and like it, is derived from a handful of postulates, namely:

• God is all good, and desires only our good.
• Our ability to receive the good which God intends for us depends on us always being ready to make another act of trust in Him and His ability to act.

The second point means that all circumstances, whether they are the result of our choices or of the choices of others or from 'acts of God', can still lead to our good if we entrust those circumstances and ourselves to God.It seems to me that if we can embrace these postulates through an act of faith, then they enable us to respond to God's graces, and eventually to understand what He is doing in our lives.